Fanaticon!

On Saturday, Me and Mr Daisy escaped our neighborhood's yearly colonization by the PGA tour, by going to FANATICON in Asheville, where these photos are from.

A splendid time was had by all.



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Below:

1) I do not know which Star Wars this costume is from, and nothing is more uncool at a Con than asking a clueless question like that. So, I didn't ask, but if you know, speak up! Loved the child's shirt, which was perfect.

2) Supergirl and Wonder Woman. I always feel so much safer when they're around!

3) Dr Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts.

4) Little girl meets Dr Strange. Too adorable!

5) Falcon Lords (band) played in the courtyard. I loved the outfits.

6) Folks listening to the Falcon Lords.

7) One of the vendors, possibly an artist. I didn't get his name, but if you recognize him, please let DEAD AIR know!

8) Really, they need NO introduction. :)

My Flickr page.

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Odds and Sods - primary edition

Left: Senators Lindsey Graham and Trent Lott, yesterday (1/12/08) at Tanner's Big Orange, Greenville, SC.



You'll have to forgive the blurry photo, but I was standing on a chair, in the back.

I was given the mistaken impression by our fearless Greenville News, that Senator John McCain himself, war hero, author and Republican presidential candidate, would be at Tanner's Big Orange yesterday. So, I hightailed it over there, only to discover that NO, he only sent his flunkies, Senators Graham and Lott. Also appearing, McCain backers, Greenville Mayor Knox White and State Senator Mike Fair. These are the heavies, folks. Mitt Romney has obviously been left for dead.

Tanner's Big Orange is as old south as it gets. We were generously given free onion rings (I skipped on the chili dogs, thanks) and orange juice while we waited for the legendary Straight Talk Express, McCain's bus, to pull up. Straight Talk? He isn't even on his bus, he is up in Michigan campaigning for the big numbers. Am I supposed to be impressed with that? And, um, Lindsey? Straight talk? Do we really wanna go there?

The place was jam-packed with southern hawks, diehard military fellas with shirts, buttons and patches letting you know which wars they were in. (One of them politely offered me his seat--yes, southern gentlemen!) This made me sweat a bit, suddenly conscious of my corduroy tie-dye skirt and long hair, but a few of the veterans had that scruffy, long-haired outsider-look Dennis Hopper used to have before he started shilling for Wall Street. These guys are SOLID behind McCain, and totally unapologetic for the Iraq War. They are there to WIN, as Lindsey repeatedly said, to cheers.

Lindsey Graham, to put it very honestly and bluntly, is one of the most charming people in the world. He is sweet, funny and whimsical. He has a million one-liners, delivered in his lilting, gee-whiz-I'm-a-Senator-can-you-dig-it? fashion. This seems like a sharp contrast to his style on the Senate floor, where he doesn't miss a trick. Nonetheless, when he started talking, I was jarred by the juxtaposition of the hard-ass, masculine veterans and sweet, nonmasculine Lindsey, and I am always surprised at how much they like him. Do they see it? If they do, they don't care. Lindsey, as usual, appealed to his military service, which he holds up like a banner in most political discussions of Iraq. And then he tells jokes. He'd be fine with ANY of the good men running for the GOP nomination, he said, except Ron Paul (whose name was met with a round of boos)...but Lindsey says he figures he'll have to worry about that when he is drafted for the NBA (he's short), so he isn't too worried.

About John Edwards (more boos), he says people don't realize that they BOTH were born in Seneca, South Carolina. In fact, Lindsey Graham and John Edwards were born in the same hospital! "I was born in the right wing of that hospital, and he was born in the left wing of that hospital!" The crowd ate it up.

I didn't hang around for Trent Lott, hey, I have my limits, okay? But I will say that in person, his toupee is something to behold. It looks much more toupee-ish than on TV, and you wonder, if he can afford summer homes and the like, can't he find a decent toupee? What's up with that?

On the way out, I spied two Ron Paul boys of college age, busily leafleting windshields. HEY GUYS! "They are trashing Ron Paul in there," I told them. They sneered in the general direction of Tanner's Big Orange. "Not too surprising!" sneered one. "Politics as usual!" sneered the other. Both chuckled that McCain couldn't even be bothered to show up in person.

Maybe, I thought, he doesn't have to. It's obviously between McCain and Huckabee here in the upstate, and judging by the tenor of the Tanner's crowd, I'd give the SC primary to McCain.

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My piece on Spider-Man and Mary Jane, the non-marriage that has rocked the comics-world to its foundations, has been linked on When Fangirls Attack, as well as Anthony McCune's Surfer's Paradise blog carnival! WELCOME EVERYONE, and stick around!

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Left: Graphic from Earthstation1.com.

Check out Ren's post, patiently explaining why pornography (and she makes it, so she knows whereof she speaks) is NOT the same as sex education. And never the twain shall meet:

Well, as I’ve said before, and as I am saying right now, and as I am sure I will have to say in the future, Porn Is Absolutely Shitty Sex Education. It sucks as sex education. It is, quite possibly, the worst excuse/form/whatever of sex education out there. Porn is adult entertainment. Pornographers and porn performers are adult entertainers. Sex Education rarely if ever enters the mind of a lot people in the porn biz, and yeah, they would do themselves a huge favor if they made porn less accessible to minors, but with the internet, file sharing, downloading, free sites, so on, I don’t even really know how much that would help. Either way, it is known that kids, male and female, are looking at porn and taking it as some form of sexual education, and that is not at all what it’s for, and the messages they are getting out of it in regards to sex & sex ed are totally inane, misinformed, and even dangerous.

A great post, really worth reading. ADULTS ONLY please! (Although maybe the teenage boys need to read it, in particular.)

GOOD WORK, REN!

~*~

Also check out Mother Jones' excellent article of last issue, Did I Steal My Daughter?--which is about international adoption.

And that's when it finally sank in: Beatriz hadn't made a "choice" in the liberating way that our post-Roe culture thinks about reproductive options. Like any woman in the developing world placing a child for adoption, she'd buckled under crushing financial or social pressure—perhaps even coercion. I'd considered this before, but had always batted the thought away by telling myself that Flora was going to be adopted, whether it was we who stepped forward or someone else.

These issues are regularly discussed on Marley Greiner's fantastic blog, The Daily Bastardette.

No Dead Air Church today, but enjoy your Sabbath anyway!

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Listening to: The Pretenders - Message of Love
via FoxyTunes

Why doth the fanboy rage?

Mary Jane and Spider-Man are no longer married. You may have heard. The title of the epic comic is ONE MORE DAY.

What, you think, they are divorced? Nope. Spidey made a deal with the devil (more about which in due course) to dissolve his marriage (of an unspecified number of years, in comic-book time), in exchange for the life of his beloved Aunt May.

This sort of cheap trick is the kind of flimy-ass plot contrivance Marvel fans used to rank DC fans for. Well, I guess the chickens have come home to roost, haven't they? (((dances DC-fan superior dance)))

As a feminist, I find it interesting that these guys have decided to make Spider-Man single just as he would likely be entering his male-midlife crisis. I am referring here to his actual chronological age, not comic-book age. Spider-Man first appeared in Marvel's Amazing Fantasy in August of 1962, which makes him 45. Time to shed that good-hearted wife, the one who keeps him on the (boring!) straight and narrow, and start partying with the babes, as the new comic makes clear. BRAND NEW DAY! is the triumphant name of the new comic. GET RID OF THE WIFE! should be the subtitle.

In fact, I view this primarily as Marvel's male midlife crisis.

What's interesting to me is how angry most of the fanboys are over the ending of the marriage. It isn't ONLY the plot, but the nullifications of so many plots over the nearly two decades (?) of Mary Jane and Peter Parker's union.

And guess what? I think the fanboys liked her. She was like their surrogate wife. What are you doing, taking her away like that? From Newsarama, Lucas Siegel writes:

To very briefly recap, Peter Parker, Spider-Man, and his then-wife Mary Jane, made a desperate deal with Mephisto to save Aunt May. Mephisto saved May’s life, but in return took Peter and MJ’s marriage. He also brought Harry Osborn back from the dead, reversed (elements at least from) the “Disassembled” (and presumably, “The Other”) storylines (giving Peter toned-down powers with no organic web shooters again), and left a twinge of pain of loss in MJ and Pete’s psyche. Mary Jane, at the last second, appeared to make some sort of side deal with this devilish being, whispering an as-yet-unrevealed something into his ear. Peter once again lives in Aunt May’s house, which is no longer burned down, and no one knows he is Spider-Man. That’s where One More Day ends, and Brand New Day begins.

So he is NOT the Devil (but sure looks like him!) but someone named Mephisto.

The number one issue in most fans’ complaints has been the deal with Mephisto. The fact that this character is commonly Marvel’s representation of the Christian Devil is a contention point for some. Others note he is not really a character Spider-Man has had much, if any, relationship to; he belongs to the mystical (Ghost Rider, Dr. Strange), and even cosmic (Silver Surfer) realms of the Marvel Universe. Still others are miffed by just how much power the guy seems to have now. Suddenly, Mephisto is put on level with The Beyonder or a living cosmic cube, or say, Scarlet Witch, on power level.

The idea of Peter Parker making a deal with the devil is perhaps the bitterest pill for most fans of the character to swallow. [Co-author Joe] Quesada’s main contention is “Peter didn’t seek Mephisto out...he appeared at just the right moment, when Peter was at his lowest and completely out of options.” Also, MJ made the deal first, with Peter just tagging along for the ride at the end, but still, agreeing to Mephisto’s terms.

Mephisto also shows MJ and Peter their not-yet-conceived child, that will never be born... tugs a bit at the heartstrings, no?

So what of the rest of the stories featuring Mary Jane from the last twenty years of comics? Well, they were either simply removed from continuity, or changed in an undisclosed way by magic. Joe says all the stories happened, but looking at post-OMD continuity, they simply couldn’t have. Harry couldn’t have died, or been the Green Goblin. Mary Jane couldn’t have had a miscarriage, unless Joe wants to promote Peter Parker, Spider-Man as having unprotected premarital sex. More recently, the various stories featuring Peter’s totemic link to other Spider-men either didn’t happen or had no real change or effect upon him. Aunt May’s house never burned down. If Tony Stark, Iron Man didn’t know Peter’s identity, he may have still made the Iron Spidey costume when Peter joined the Avengers, allowing for the three Iron Spideys currently in the pages of Avengers: Initiative, but that still bears problems. Peter and Tony grew close because of the shared information of his secret identity. How would Peter have worked for Tony in the civilian identity and super-hero simultaneously without his ID being known? Unfortunately, no answers to these questions seem to be coming.

You can see the problems, then.

Some comments from some of the fanboys over at Newsarama:

:: I think for me one of the biggest and most insulting things that Joe Quesada has brought upon himself with this story is his continuing assertion that if Peter divorced MJ it would make him a bad person.

This sounds like he's suggestion divorce is always bad, and that people who get divorces are bad people. This is an incredibly bad thing to say, and totally wrong. People get divorces for good reasons all the time.

I mean, what if Peter divorces MJ so she can at least live a normal life without having to follow him into hiding? He divorces her to, in effect, save her life. Isn't this altruistic and in the end a 'good' thing to do?

:: I have a feeling this story is kind of like Star Wars - Lucas had an ending for his story and basic plot points to hit on, but his epic was cobbled together over time, there was no grand plan to the whole thing.

:: OMD was a terrible story. Want to do away with the marriage? Fine, but do it through a GOOD STORY. OMD was a story that felt like it was written by someone with no common sense or understanding of the subject matter.

I can only hope all this is a "clever" ruse, that this story will run over a few months with Peter realizing what has happened and reversing it. I'm not a big fan of continuity, which is why I don't read much DC since it's so continuity-heavy, but you can't, as a reader, logically accept that this one thing (the marriage) has just been plucked from existence with no major ramifications. It just doesn't work.

:: Does anyone seriously thinking there are just throngs of kids out there picking up Spider-man books, flipping through them and going, "Dude, he's married? Ew, I can't relate to that!" then tossing the book aside and going home to play video games? It's certainly Marvel's right to try to change their readership's demographics and try to aim the book more at kids than at the older men who make up most of their audience today. If it works, good for them. But you can't expect us to be happy about it, especially when it was done in such a silly, cliched and out-of-character way.

:: Seriously, "One More Day" was like Poochie going back to his home planet on "The Simpsons."

In short, nobody thinks this is good, except the people at Marvel.

And to judge by ONE MORE DAY, Mary Jane is also very sad. :(

Mike Wieringo 1963-2007

I have just learned comic book artist Mike Wieringo, known to folks in comics as 'Ringo', died on August 12. He was 44, a vegetarian, and died of a heart attack.

He drew several of the familiar MARVEL favorites such as Spiderman, Fantastic Four and Rogue, as well as DC's Justice League and The Flash. From Newsarama:

Wieringo was born June 24th, 1963 in Venice, Italy, and first caught the attention of comic book fans when he joined writer Mark Waid on DC's The Flash with issue #80 in 1993. Together, the two co-created the character Impulse, the future speedster brought back to the present. Wieringo (or, 'Ringo as he was better known by then) moved on to Robin at DC, and then moved to Marvel, where he settled in on Sensational Spider-Man with writer Todd DeZago.

The pairing with DeZago was something of fate, as the two co-created and launched their creator-owned property Tellos, which saw several projects and miniseries published over the years. Ringo moved back to DC for a run on Adventures of Superman, and then, in 2002, reunited with Waid for a run on Fantastic Four that was perhaps best known for fan outcry when Marvel announced that they were going to replace the team. Marvel quickly reversed their decision, and the two completed their run on the series.

Ringo then moved to Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man with writer Peter David, and most recently, completed a Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four miniseries written by Jeff Parker. His next project had not been announced, although, as readers of his blog knew, he was very excited at the prospect of doing more Tellos work, with an eye on being able to debut something at next month's Baltimore Comic-Con.

This was Mike's webpage and Wikipedia entry.

Rest in Peace, Ringo.